It might be possible that the terrain "Cost" structures for vehicles and bots can be altered to bring back that feature. But besides that, these are just the core combat units in game right now. Once combat balancing is better tuned, they'll be adding all kinds of support units like you've described. I would very much in favor of bots being specialists/skirmishers/harassers while vehicles focused on heavy firepower.
i thought that the purpose of bots over vehicles would be the same purpose that would exist in reality. bots are more mobile and can handle worse terrain then vehicle. it would be cool to implement the problem that vehicles have movement penalties on dessert or rocky environments while vehicles can have their own advantage. from how the environments are being rendered it seems obvious that this feature is going to happen
The TML-4 was ******* awesome. How many people on ladder got an unfortunate TML surprise when facing me... heh heh
Yeah I always thought that was silly too. Bots should be more nimble, faster turning, yaw, etc but not necessarily faster.
Thats completely wrong, at least for bipedal bots. Bipedal bots follow the principle of an inverse pendulum (if you don't know what that is, look it up). That means that they actually need to lean forward before they can accelerate and they need to lean back before they can decelerate. In between, they show linear acceleration up to their top speed, which is very similar to wheeled vehicles. Leaning backwards / forwards shouldn't be simulated though, lets just assume that bots already knew where you would send them and automatically choose the right pose. Where they differ, is in which direction the bot accelerates. A bot can accelerate in ANY direction. It doesn't need to turn first, it can start moving backwards sidewards and while it accelerates, it turns its legs in the right direction so it can reach top speed. The second difference in the movement of bots and vehicles is how vertical and horizontal speed relate. It's actually quite complicate for wheeled vehicles as moving upwards counters their natural acceleration, effectively slowing them down. Vehicles can only climb ramps if they have sufficient acceleration to overcome the gravity at the given angle. For bipedal bots (only bipedal, quadrupedal bots and alike hove only one maximum speed!) this isn't true. Maximum vertical and horizontal movement speed are two unrelated constants, and maximum total speed is determined in such way, that neither individual maximum is exceeded. Also note that bipedal bots NEVER align with terrain. NEVER! Maximum climbing angle is only limited by a point where either the feets no longer meet the ground without the upper body colliding with terrain, or where the feets start slipping. But it's not only about movement. It would be pointless to build a bot which fulfills the same role as a tank, a bot has to be lightweight at any cost or the legs won't be able to support . It HAS to counter the lack of weight (and therefor also armor) with the use of advanced technology. Using ballistic weapons is NOT an option for bots, they would neither be able to take the recoil, nor could they support the weight of the ammunition. Roles which require advanced computation power fit a bot very well, after all it already HAS a powerful CPU core which is required for coordination of the legs.
I think bots should be divided into two categories, big (tier2) and little (tier1) that have capabilities that vehicles can't immulate. Little bots are fast and cheap but don't pack much of punch but they're not slowed down too badly over rough or broken terrain. Vehicles, but normal (tier1) and advanced (tier 2) occupy the wide middle. They are relatively fast no matter what size, are relatively quite durable and have high firepower graduating up as their increase in size. They are, however, limited (except for hover capable units) by their length and their wheel base. Because of this there's an upper limit on their size and speed over rough terrain. Sure you can have giant tank with 4 barrels but it can only fight on steel planets and it moves like glacier. Big bots can pretty much go anywhere and they can take their relatively big guns, though no so big as vehicles) with them. They should be able to traverse all but the most severe terrain. Something like this will encourage vehicle units in battles that occur on plains or other open terrain and the production of bot units on harder terrain and nice mashups in mixed terrain.
+1 for the detailed response. But I still fell as though there isn't a big enough difference between the two to justify having bots and vehicles, unless bots become specialized units. We can ignore the weight thing, simply because they said "We aren't going for realistic, we're going for awesome." Perhaps bot units should be able to build faster, or would serve as better candidates for launching into space (try launching a vehicle with a large flat wheel base into orbit).
